MORE than 5,000 people in Wales suffered from food poisoning in 2011 according to official statistics.

This is a surprisingly large sum and is probably only half the picture as most moderate cases go unrecorded. However, it gives us an indicator of how many people fall ill from badly-prepared food each year, and why one of the Assembly’s first pieces of legislation since last year’s referendum is aimed at improving food safety. This is a bill that the Party of Wales wholeheartedly supports.

Most of us will have seen the food hygiene stickers displayed in various restaurants and takeaways that rate the cleanliness of the business on a scale of one to five.

However, you have probably only seen them in establishments with a fairly good rating – those who receive one or zero do not tend to display their ratings.

We heard evidence in committee from the Food Standards Agency that only 6% of food businesses that have a score of zero, one or two actually display their score and their sticker. A student in my office over the summer did a piece of research on food businesses in Aberystwyth. Only 42% of the 80 food businesses looked at actually displayed their food hygiene scores, and 0% – not a single business – with a score of zero, one or two actually displayed a sticker despite 24% of the businesses surveyed having those scores.

This is because food businesses are not obliged to display their ratings, or inform any of their customers what their rating is. And although it is possible for you to find out the rating of any establishment through the Food Standards Agency website (spend an hour doing this about places near you – the results will shock you), businesses are not obliged to display their ratings on their premises.

Research by Consumer Focus shows that most people simply do not check the rating of where they are going to eat. Takeaways are often an impulse decision. People tend not to think about food hygiene unless they become ill or there is a food scare, but we want them to be able to make an informed decision quickly when they are purchasing food.

It is often thought that food safety is a binary issue; that food businesses are either safe or unsafe. People also expect basic food hygiene across the board and they often believe that businesses that are not safe will be closed down by the authorities. But this is not necessarily the case.

That is why this legislation hopes to expose the various grades of hygiene and encourage businesses to operate to higher standards through of market demand.

It stands to reason that consumers are more likely to choose a more hygienic restaurant over one with a lower rating.

So it is for these reasons, and more, that one of the first pieces of legislation the National Assembly of Wales will pass as a legislative body will be the Food Hygiene Bill.

This bill will require all food establishments to display their ratings somewhere visible, but the Party of Wales has called for this commitment to be furthered by extending that requirement online where an increasing number of takeaways are ordered.

This piece of legislation is simple, and the principles behind it are supported by all parties. But its simplicity is its strength, and it could revolutionise the food industry and substantially reduce the cases of food poisoning that happen every year, and therefore the costs the NHS faces.

If people, when deciding to have a takeaway following a night out, or deciding where to eat, are confronted by a sticker that shows an establishment has a poor rating, they will often decide to eat elsewhere – probably at a place with a higher rating.

Indeed over a third of Welsh food businesses already have full marks in hygiene, and these businesses deserve to advertise this fact. It is the poor performers who currently hide their scores that have to up their game if they want to stay in business.